UPDATE (30-March-2015): I am adding a consolidated list of comment replies here in order to trim the comment thread.

We are not accepting previously published stories. Only new stories please.

We aren’t interested in novels. Only short stories to a maximum of 7,500 words.

If a story doesn’t have an HEA/HFN (Happy Ever After / Happy For Now), then it can’t properly be classified as a Romance; more an “SF with Romantic Elements”. For the time being, we’re sticking with the requirement for straight SFR, as opposed to SFwRE. Should we change the requirements, I’ll update this page forthwith.

Platonic romances in short stories are fine, as long as the romantic thread resolves with an HFN/HEA ending.

We only accept one short story per writer per issue.

Queer romances are fine.

Stories from outside the USA are encouraged.

If you have a story that’s tied in to a universe you’ve written, that’s fine, but the story must make sense without having to resort to reading those events in previous/future books.

If you want to italicise something in the text, then use italics. Please DON’T use underlines. Underlines were used when typewriters were ubiquitous and you had only one set of keys at your disposal. That is no longer the case. If you want italics, *use* italics.

Ms Fiction Editor Dooley also reminds me that, likewise, the “two spaces after a fullstop/period” rule has also gone the way of the dodo. Only one space after the period, please.

Janet, you know how an email address is made up of two parts? The name of the person, then the symbol “@” then the name of the domain, such as “gmail.com”? Well, the “@” is normally pronounced “at”, and the dot between “gmail” and “com” is normally pronounced “dot”. So, the address to reach Ms Dooley is “fiction at SciFiRomanceQuarterly dot org”, just as yours may be something like “janet at gmail dot com”.

Have a look at your, or a friend’s, email address the next time you use your email program (Outlook, Gmail in a browser window, KMail, Thunderbird, etc.) and you’ll notice this similarity between all email addresses.

Why have we specified the address like this? Because there are things out there called “bots” that go around harvesting email addresses and using them to direct hundreds and hundreds of spam messages to. So, people who need to make their address visible for some reason (as we need to do), “camouflage” the email message so the bots can’t read it. But, once you’re used to how email addresses are formatted, you’ll be able to crack them like a pro.